


Let The Sky Fall

by LauraEMoriarty



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:50:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraEMoriarty/pseuds/LauraEMoriarty
Summary: They would cross oceans, galaxies, the stars would tremble, and she knows she would still take those same steps, knowing that it will lead her to him. A thousand lifetimes, a million years, stars colliding and galaxies imploding, stars going dim in the night sky, and James is in those thousand lifetimes, always shadowing her, always her anchor.





	Let The Sky Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DalishGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DalishGrey/gifts).



> Merry Christmas to the lovely [Dalishgrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dalishgrey). May your 2019 be a happy one.
> 
> Thanks also to [Barbex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/barbex) for betaing.

The Citadel is quiet and hushed in the moments before the great plunge into chaos. Before the shattering of bodies and the shattering of lives. It begins with a keening echoing through the deserted halls, ricocheting gunfire, and the sharp scent of eezo. A rattle of machine guns, the answering volley coming from close by. It is not the death that matters in those moments, but life. The battle for the Citadel has Shepard and James and Liara hunkered down in an alleyway— their chests heaving from exertion. They’ve left Executor Pallin dying in the mad dash to reach the other living council members, to protect them from Cerberus and Udina’s would-be coup.

Bailey’s voice crackles over the comms, announcing the arrival of the elevator. They dart after the assassin, firing at him as he evades them, towards the elevator, and disappears.

They are in a race, the chaos of battle and the impending doom.

Back to back, shoulder to shoulder, guns blazing as the battle wears on. They are fire and steel, one burning, the other slicing, cold and precise. They move in a graceful dance, and Shepard senses the power shift between her and James: no longer is he her underling, no longer her gaoler. Thane has been run through— saving the life of the salarian councillor. Now they are in a race against time, against the inevitable deaths of so many more. She looks across at James, sees the blood on his visor, knows they’re both covered in blood and gore. They have gone from simply having one another’s backs in missions, from flirting in the shuttle bay and dancing, to something indescribable. Shepard doesn’t know when that shift happened— whether it was a gradual thing, or something deeper.

She ejects her spent ammo sink, and reloads. Another dance of fire and steel, of waltzing across the battlefield with one step firmly in the other world, the space between life and death. It is in this space that Shepard exists: she is neither fully alive, nor fully dead. The haunting melody of death and life entwined with the beating of her synthetic heart, the synthetic blood that pumps through her veins. She is more machine than human, more a Valkyrie than a _bean-nighe,_ but neither of those two are the sum of her total parts. She flirts with the idea of duality— the Hero of the Citadel; the woman broken and unmade inside— and the spirit she knows possesses her in battle. She is the old Norse legendary _bearsark_ — the word meaning bear-shirt— with her flame-red hair and blue eyes the colour of the cloudless, endless sky of Earth. Death is no grim spectre with a scythe and a black cloak— for she is death made flesh. The grim washerwoman at the ford, the harbinger of destruction, the last breath before the end.

James is at her side as she feels her energy wavering, his hand on the small of her back. He always watches, always knows when she is ready to drop, and is always there. A hand in the small of her back, a hip bump, a bastion of her life. He knows, and sees, more than he lets on. He hands her a fresh thermal clip, and she inserts it into her shotgun, flashing him a brief, grateful smile. They move as one, a fluid dance that sees them taking on atlases and centurions, banshees and marauders. He anchors her, keeping her firmly in this world rather than the world she wishes to exist in: the in-between world of shadows and dreams. For there is no life in that half-world, no pain, no love.

They take on a barrage of other battles, both of them dreaming and drifting, but remaining firmly on this plane. Shepard stares out at the vast endlessness of space, her arms wrapped around her body for warmth. She sits on a chair in the bar, her hair wet, and shivers. Shepard wonders if she’ll ever be warm again, frozen from the deep dive into the endless sea. Like the legends of the kraken, she is sure she has risen on the surface only to die again. Arms, a chest that is warm and solid, comes to wrap itself around her body, and leans into the hard, solidity of James’s embrace. He lets her be the person she desires to be, beyond that of the Valkyrie and the ancient grim spectre of death. She turns in his arms, her head resting against him, her ear over his heart, where she hears the beating, the life offered to her by this man who has always had her back.

His lips find hers, hesitant at first, and then the kiss ignites something deep within her hollow shell. He pulls her back into reality, grounding her in it. He lifts her, carries her to the sofa. Their lips meet again and again, like someone seeking salvation, like the world has been made anew. There is nothing but them as she tugs his top off, her hands so much smaller than his, as he tugs her hoodie up over her head and his hands ghost over the bare flesh of her shoulders. Their kisses are soft, deep, warm. Here, she is just the woman— Sorcha— not _Shepard_. She allows herself this, a moment between death and battles. He makes her feel alive, well and truly. They are anchored to one another, his hands caressing her cheeks, holding her, cherishing her. It has been a long time since she has felt cherished, loved, wanted. The evidence of his desire nudges against her, and she moans, opening to him as he kisses a line down her body, his mouth on her breasts, her nipples pebbling under his skilled tongue. Her legs wrap around his waist, hips undulating as James’s hand drifts against her most intimate parts.

“I think I love you, James Vega,” she says, her voice sure and certain as she lies in his arms, one of his arms cradling her, sheltering her as it has always done.

He has been there forever, lurking somewhere in the galaxy, waiting for her. She is lucky, she knows, to have found him.

“And I think I love you, Sorcha Shepard,” James says, kissing her shoulder, and they anchor each other again.

It is love that sustains them both, and they would not have it any other way. They would cross oceans, galaxies, the stars would tremble, and she knows she would still take those same steps, knowing that it will lead her to him. A thousand lifetimes, a million years, stars colliding and galaxies imploding, stars going dim in the night sky, and James is in those thousand lifetimes, always shadowing her, always her anchor.


End file.
